


On the Inevitability of Falling

by chaosmanor



Series: On the Inevitability of Falling [4]
Category: Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: Angst, Begging, Lipstick & Lip Gloss, M/M, Messy, Reconciliation Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-08-01
Updated: 2007-08-01
Packaged: 2017-11-20 23:23:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/590843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaosmanor/pseuds/chaosmanor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Disclaimer: This is a non-profit, non-commercial work of fiction using the names and likenesses of real individuals. This fictional story is not intended to imply that the events herein actually occurred, or that the attitudes or behaviors described are engaged in or condoned by the real persons whose names are used without permission.</p>
    </blockquote>





	On the Inevitability of Falling

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: This is a non-profit, non-commercial work of fiction using the names and likenesses of real individuals. This fictional story is not intended to imply that the events herein actually occurred, or that the attitudes or behaviors described are engaged in or condoned by the real persons whose names are used without permission.

He fell. He fell so far, first of all stumbling to his car, then driving home by instinct alone, and the little bit of him that was detached from what had happened figured that if he could drive across LA through the traffic like that, he must be an Angelino now.

He needed to fall into his bed and take as many muscle relaxants and opiates as he could find, just wipe himself off the face of the planet temporarily, but he was covered in come and sweat.

The shower was scalding hot, making his skin scream, and it was only as he washed himself that he realised the implications of what had happened.

Viggo had fucked him without a condom.

He slid slowly down the wall of the shower, hands over his face, beyond crying now, beyond anything. The one thing that Viggo had held back, in all the time they were together. The one thing Orlando had begged him for, their wedding ring, their symbol of trust and commitment. The one thing Viggo had withheld.

And he had given it to Orlando, after all that time, when it was too late, after Orlando had left and moved on.

 

Clothes were too difficult, so Orlando averted his eyes from the mirror, certain that he was marked by Viggo’s touch in some way that he would not be able to deny, and he crawled into bed.

 

There were pills beside his bed, of course, and a bottle of water, so he took a randomly generated number of pills, enough to make it difficult to gulp down, but not so many he’d kill himself. He was a survivor, if gravity hadn’t killed him, no fucking ex-lover was going to.

 

Kris woke him, shaking his shoulder while Sidi leapt around on the bed, woofing excitedly, and Orlando groaned and rolled over, pulling the covers over his head to block out the sunlight streaming through the curtains and sound of Kris being enthusiastic.

“Fuck off,” he said indistinctly into the pillow.

“People want to kill you,” Kris said cheerfully. “For missing appointments. Unfortunately they keep shouting at me about it first, so I figured I should come and wake you up, share the misery around.”

“Wassa time?” Orlando said, rolling onto his back, pillow still over his face.

There was no answer, and Orlando was acutely aware that as he’d rolled over the quilt had slipped down, leaving his shoulders bare.

Kris yanked the pillow off Orlando’s face, and the sudden light made Orlando wince, but not as much as the horror on Kris’s face.

Sidi bounced onto Orlando’s licking his face and as Orlando fended him off, he was suddenly and horribly aware that his face was a mess; split lip, eyes swollen from crying, all sore and bruised-feeling. He probably should have looked in the mirror the night before.

“Fucking hell,” Kris said. “Do you want me to call a doctor? The police?”

“No!” Orlando said, and he rolled back, hiding his face again.

The room went icy, and the bedroom door slammed, making Sidi yelp in surprise, and when Orlando slid a hand over his shoulder experimentally, he could fucking feel the bite marks.

 

Kris was sitting at his kitchen table, arms crossed, staring blankly out of the lounge windows, and Orlando sat down opposite him and said, “I can explain…” even though he knew that he couldn’t possibly.

“It’s not me you have to explain anything to,” Kris said. “It’s a certain young woman who is in a fucking psychiatric clinic on the other side of the country. Who fucking loves you, and presumably has no idea that you were off having a Hugh Grant moment last night.”

The inventory of how Orlando was feeling wasn’t good: churning gut, pounding head, the kind of back spasm that made him just want to die. He put his head down on his folded arms on the table and groaned. He’d really fucked this up, on a grand scale.

“Oh God,” he said, and he must have sounded miserable because Kris patted his shoulder comfortingly.

“So you got drunk and picked up some bird,” Kris said. “Unless you also got yourself arrested for it, or the bird talks, no one will ever know. And you wouldn’t be the first bloke to go for a bit of stray.”

“It was a man,” Orlando said, his voice still muffled by the table.

The pats stopped and Kris said, “Didn’t you tell me, back when I first started to work for you, that you were definitely going straight?”

There was no way to explain anything to Kris, no way to say that the man he’d been with was Viggo, and that even after three years and a bitter break-up, he hadn’t been able to stay away.

Orlando could taste salt in his throat, and his nose was running, and he said, “Go away,” and it probably wasn’t directed at Sidi, who had chosen that moment to push his nose into Orlando's crotch.

Orlando’s phone rang, and he listened to Kris answer it, and relief washed through him when it was obvious it wasn’t Viggo calling, then he realised Viggo didn’t know his number, and wasn’t going to call anyway. Why would Viggo call him? Orlando had left without saying goodbye, he’d walked away for a second time.

It wasn't the fall that was worrying him, it was what might be waiting at the bottom.

 

And he just kept right on falling, no elastic strap, no harness, no safety at all.

He shed the bits of his life that had grown over him in the past few years; assistants and stylists, darling Katie, who understood nothing of what he tried to explain to her, only heard that he had slept with someone else.

He ditched his white shirts and black suits, went and bought lurid orange and lime green cargoes, and Birkenstocks, and shirts that looked like tableclothes and curtains. He couldn't cut his hair off, but he could grow a beard, at least until he had to film again, and he began to look more like himself somehow.

He took Sidi back from Kris, and let the dog loose in his flat. He traded his car, swapped it for something small and anonymous. He could have sold his flat too, gone back to London to live, but he didn't.

People noticed, commented, speculated; but he ignored Aileene's hysterics, and didn't read any of the press. He didn't try to stop Katie and Robin for blaming the break-up on his infidelity, it was the truth after all, or at least part of the truth, and what did anything matter to him now?

And there came a day when he thought he might have hit rock bottom, not long before he was due to fly out to start work on Pirates again, and when it seemed like there wasn't anywhere else to go anymore, not even down, he drove to Viggo's house.

 

Sidi bounded out of the car when Orlando opened the driver's door, scrambling across his lap, barking like crazy at Brigit, who had hobbled out from the long grass to see who had arrived.

Orlando didn't need to watch them settle the hierarchy, he could hear the growl from Brigit, and the snap of teeth, and Sidi slunk up the steps behind Orlando, shaking his head a little. Brigit was a dog of consequence, more than capable of sorting out a lunatic like Sidi.

"You and me both," Orlando said, bending down to pat Sidi's haunches reassuringly.

 

"Thought you might wash up here," Viggo said casually as he stepped back to let Orlando in.

"Did you?" Orlando asked, and Sidi hurtled past his legs, barking happily.

He followed Viggo through, not to the living room, but to his studio.

Viggo hitched one hip on his work table and looked expectantly at Orlando, and Orlando guessed that he hadn't done anything to deserve assistance from Viggo; he was going to have to do all the work.

"I'm here to discuss terms," he said.

"Terms of what?" Viggo said, but there was a smile tickling his lips.

"Surrender," Orlando said, and Sidi skittered into the room, feet crunkling the newspaper that Viggo had spread across the floor for reasons that escaped Orlando, and buried his nose hopefully under the couch.

"Surrender is a mighty big word," Viggo said, but he peeled himself away from the table and ambled across the studio to where Orlando was hesitating in the doorway. "What makes you think I want you to surrender? You left me. Maybe I don't want you back."

His words were cool, detached and rational, and Orlando's chest burned, but the fingertips that scraped across his cheek were loving, stroking Orlando's nascent beard, tracing his jaw where a muscle jumped.

"Please," Orlando whispered, and Viggo leant forward and pressed his lips against Orlando's briefly.

"That's better," he whispered back. Then he was pulling away, going back to his worktable, leaning back with his arms crossed his chest, studying Orlando.

Inside, Orlando felt giddy with hope, and with desire, just from one brief kiss.

"So?" Viggo said. "You mentioned terms. What are you offering? You've left me often enough I'm finding it hard to believe you really want to come back."

Sidi pulled his nose out from the couch cushions and snuffled around Orlando's feet, then collapsed down in front of Orlando, belly exposed.

Orlando rubbed his foot across Sidi's belly, making the dog squirm, and said, "No bullshit. No publicists, or girlfriends, fake or real. The world can go fuck itself."

The tiny smile was back on Viggo's mouth, even though he shook his head disbelievingly, and Orlando would have felt that the whole damn thing was pointless if he hadn’t been able to read that flicker.

But Viggo wasn’t moving, Orlando was going to have to make his feet carry him a little further, across the expanse of paint-spattered newspapers, and it seemed fair that since Orlando had left, it was him that had to come back again.

The paper crunched under his feet as he stepped over Sidi, and Viggo didn’t meet him halfway, Orlando had to walk the whole distance, until he stood in front of him.

There were words in their history, that Viggo had written for him in New Zealand, when the world had been new and beautiful and they’d kissed at four in the morning in the doorway of a bookshop in Cuba Mall, words that Orlando had spent three long lonely years running away from.

There was no need to say them now; they were there anyway, when Orlando dropped to his knees in front of Viggo and pressed his face against the worn denim, thick scent, fingers sliding through his hair, pressing him closer, salt water soaking into indigo blue.

Fingertips of steel dug into Orlando's face, lifting it up, and the top button of Viggo's jeans was undone, the head of his cock pushing through the opening as his jeans slid lower.

If Orlando hadn’t already been on his knees, the sight of Viggo’s cock, violaceous and turgid, would have brought him there, but when he moaned and leant forward a little, tongue snaking out, the fingertips bored into his cheeks.

“Don’t mark me,” he said, and it came out as a question, and when he looked up, Viggo’s face was twisted, presumably with the effort of holding them both back.

The fingers loosened their grip, and Orlando swallowed in relief, but there was no matching relief in Viggo’s gaze.

“This is going to break both of us; you know that, don’t you?”

 

In the bedroom Viggo peeled Orlando’s clothes off him delicately while Brigit heaved herself up onto her chair and pressed her nose against the glass of the window to watch Sidi throw himself hysterically around the garden, barking dementedly.

The first touch was electric, sending sparks rushing through Orlando, and it seemed that in the misery of his fall, he’d forgotten that there was this waiting for him, that once he’d found the strength to give himself to Viggo there’d be this moment, that Viggo would kiss him so slow and gentle that Orlando’s heart would break all over again.

“Let go,” Viggo murmured against his ear. “Don’t fight the feelings.”

Viggo’s hands were rough, scratching at Orlando’s skin, abrading him, and Viggo’s mouth was wet when it whispered, “Close your eyes.”

The light from the windows was crimson through Orlando’s eyelids, and something slick and oily slid across his face, down one cheek, across his chin, rubbing against his beard, then spread chemicals across his lips.

Orlando knew the taste instantly, he hadn’t spent the past three years kissing exclusively girls for no reason: it was lipstick.

His eyes flew open, then Viggo was kissing him hard, hard, too much, and he clung to Viggo and kissed him back. This was what it felt like to have his soul devoured, to be eaten alive, to be subsumed. Viggo would obliterate him, wipe off the face of the planet, shatter him, and Orlando would go willingly, as long as it meant he felt alive again after so long in a coma.

Colour smeared over one nipple, then the other, and Orlando howled when Viggo bit at the colour, scarlet pain, then the burning arc of pleasure that followed. He needed this so desperately, needed Viggo to touch him, fuck him, hold him, wipe his mind clear, drown him…

Viggo was right, this was going to break both of them, but Orlando didn’t fucking care.

Viggo kissed him; mouth, neck, shoulders, then where his hands had been, and Orlando spread his legs wide and trembles ran through him at the first blessed touch of Viggo’s mouth.

“Oh God,” Orlando groaned, and he clutched wildly at the bed head, sending something crashing to the floor. “Fuck me!” He didn’t know any other way to ask for what he needed, any other way to tell Viggo that he was going to die, any moment, unless Viggo. Did. Something.

It burnt when Viggo slid into him, stung and sharp and needle, and Viggo’s mouth was wet and slow, too much, begging, need.

They drew breath, deep shuddering breaths, and Orlando’s lungs hurt, like his arse and his mouth and his heart, and it was all so sudden and complete, just to be there, and he must have said something because Viggo stilled his hips and lifted his mouth.

“I’ve been here all the time, waiting for you,” Viggo murmured, and his kiss was a promise.

It was slow and inexorable, unstoppable, and Orlando didn't fight any of it, just did what he had come there to do, he surrendered.

 

He was held, arms around him, leg draped over his, and it felt like he was basking in golden sunlight, only dusk had fallen sometime, and the room was in deep shadows.

Both of the dogs were camped on the bed, Brigit in the seat of power against Viggo's back, Sidi at the foot of the bed, nose on his paws, snoozing. Viggo was quiet, only the hand gently stroking Orlando's back an indication he wasn't also asleep.

Orlando was quiet too, deep contentment filling him, sleepy smile, hair damp with sweat, the air thick with the smell of sex. He let out a slow deep sigh. He felt... peaceful. If this was what losing, what surrender, felt like, he never wanted to fight again.

“Shower,” he murmured drowsily, and even in the half-light he could see the smears of lipstick over his body, like a madman had tried to solve a maze puzzle on him, and had become frustrated.

 

Viggo had left him propped up under the hot water, loofah in his hand as he tried to move the lipstick, and even over the pelt of the water, he could hear voices and dogs barking.

Curiosity, and the vague idea that the lipstick must have come from somewhere, made Orlando turn off the water and listen more carefully.

Nothing was clear, then a woman’s voice shouted, “You fucking asshole!” clearly, even through the closed door.

Curiosity warred with self-preservation; enlightened self-interest won, and he locked the bathroom door and pulled Viggo’s robe on.

Smash. Thud. Shatter.

Bang.

There was a quiet rap on the bathroom door, and Viggo said, “It’s safe to come out now.”

The bedroom looked like someone had trashed it, or like they’d just fucked. The sheets and bedding were dragged across the floor, the mattress was askew, bedside lamp broken, mirror shattered, clothes strewn across the rug; lipstick absolutely everywhere, smeared across the mattress and sheets, along with blood and come and sweat and worse.

There were red smears up the wall behind the bed, on the bathroom door; Viggo’s mouth, teeth, lips, were red.

“Uh oh,” was all Orlando could think of to say.

Viggo nodded.

“Seems Leandra has decided opinions about monogamy,” Viggo said wryly, and he bent over and heaved the mattress back onto the base, then tossed the sheets in a pile on it. “Coming back to bed?”

Sidi and Brigit leaped onto the bed, Sidi with zeal, burrowing under the tumble of sheets, Brigit more sedately and with dignity, and Orlando flopped down onto the mattress beside them.

“Fuck, yeah,” he said.


End file.
